The Gustav Greene tables - Complete!

[larry merlau]

rennie try painting the sparkles with a fine sharpie and dark dye also any chance of using the other side of this panel? mohawk makes some dye pens that are like a sharpie marker for touch up work

 

[Rennie Heuer]

rennie try painting the sparkles with a fine sharpie and dark dye also any chance of using the other side of this panel? mohawk makes some dye pens that are like a sharpie marker for touch up work

The other side is much worse but I didn’t worry much about it since it was the underside.

I might look into the pens.

 

[Dan Noren]

It's not a flaw, it's a design feature.....

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

...I might look into the pens.

I've done some pretty invisible fixes on guitars and picture frames with a good assortment of earth-toned Sharpies. The Mohawk pens provide an even better spectrum of colors.

 

[Charles Lent]

I have just used some very dark stain and tiny artist brushes to simulate the nearby grain and cover glue spots and epoxy fills. With just a little practice and care the glue will be completely invisible in the finished piece. Little tiny oval dots of dark stain and some very thin slightly wavy lines are all it takes. You may need to get the artist brushes, but you likely already have some very dark stain that will work. If you don't like the result, sand it off and try again. The key to this is to make it look as close to the nearby grain as possible.

I once filled a 1/2" knot hole with epoxy and then painted grain over it like this. To this day, only I know where the epoxy is.

Charley

 

[Rennie Heuer]

Success! After scraping and very light hand sanding the sparkles came back when dye was applied. At first this was discouraging but I began to think that the sparkles represented a ‘sheen’ difference and might disappear under a top coat turned out I was right (happens once in a while). I applied two coats of rock hard and no sparkle can be seen. However, I thought the finish did not match well with the satin arm-r-seal so I wiped on two light coats of the arm-r-seal. I’m happy with the results.

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

Looks good. I figured you'd find some way to fix it, Rennie.

 

[Tom Niemi]

Glad you found a solution Rennie

 

[glenn bradley]

Excellent!

 

[Rennie Heuer]

After the “sparkle” issues it’s nice to get to this point in the build. Still have to rub out the finish on he top and build the drawer but it finally looks like a table. Getting started on the matching end tables today.

 

[Tom Niemi]

That looks spectacular Rennie

 

[Steve Southwood]

Looks great

 

[David Johnson]

Very Very nice. Excellent job.
David

 

[glenn bradley]

He wins! Glad that all worked out. The table is beautiful. Great color.

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

That looks awesome, Rennie!

 

[Dan Noren]

Way cool Rennie!!!

 

[Robert Horky]

Very, very nice. Great job. Glad to hear the speckles are gone.

 

[Rennie Heuer]

The customer is coming tomorrow to pick these up. Sure hope he likes them!

It was fun putting these two styles together and coming out with something that looks as though it 'could have been". Maybe, just maybe, Gustav, Henry and Charles would be OK with it.

 

[Dave Richards]

Nice work Rennie.

FWIW, when I'm gluing up something like your table top, I first dry clamp the parts and rub a bar of paraffin along the seams. This creates a barrier for any glue squeeze out and works better than masking tape. After the glue has set up I run a card scraper over the surface to pop the glue off and get rid of most of the paraffin. Then I use mineral spirits to get the rest of the paraffin and confirm no remaining glue. It works very well and a box of paraffin is really cheap at the grocery store.

 

[Darren Wright]

Beautiful tables Rennie!